4.19.2009

The Japanese have been creating and manufacturing ornate and decorative manhole covers for many years. Some with color (sand or enamel), and some just crafted of steel and or iron. There are thousands of photo galleries and flickr sets of these but here I pulled a few of my personal favorites and categorized them, first by color, then by subject, for you.

After the images there are links to many more images from around the web.

Color:Living creatures:Flora and landscapes:

People and Industry:

The majority of the above images were photographed between 1997 and 2002 and are from the online Japanese Manhole Art Museum (site is in Japanese) and can be found here.

Links for other japanese manhole cover art and online galleries:

• There are 302 images of japanese manhole covers on flickr, see them here.
• And a particularly good flickr set /collection of Japanese manhole covers here.•Pink Tentacle has a great collection of links and some images of Japanese manhole covers here.
• And you can see some more images here.